Best Practices for Planning and Deploying Modular Data Centers

There's a lot to love about modular data centers (MDCs), which offer benefits like lower construction costs (in most cases, at least) and the ability to expand data center capacity granularly by adding MDCs one-by-one.

But the total value that a modular data center brings depends on exactly how it's built and how you manage it. Some approaches to modular data center design, construction and deployment deliver greater overall benefits than others.

To that end, we've prepared this guide to modular data center best practices to help optimize the way organizations acquire and use MDCs. Keep reading for tips on how to get the most out of MDCs.

What is a Modular Data Center?

Before diving in, let's briefly define what modular data centers are and why organizations typically use them.

A modular data center is a portable facility for hosting IT equipment. Most modular data centers are prefabricated inside a factory, then shipped to the location where a business wants to operate a data center. There, the modular data center is simply plugged in and ready to go.

Compared to conventional data centers, which are constructed on-site, modular data centers offer a simple, flexible, extensible approach to implement data center facilities. Businesses can deploy them quickly and easily wherever they need to host IT equipment.

Related:Modular Data Center Market Growth Accelerated by AI – Omdia

More organizations are turning to modular builds to meet their needs. Recent Omdia research reveals that the market for prefabricated modular and micro data centers will reach $11.7 billion by 2027, fueled in part by the need to speed-up data center builds in the wake of the AI boom.

Tips for Getting the Most From Modular Data Centers

To use modular data centers to maximum effect, consider the following best practices.

1. Think beyond shipping containers

Many modular data centers are constructed inside shipping containers – which makes sense, since the containers are prefabricated and easy to move.

But this doesn't mean all modular data centers have to take the form of shipping containers. If you want a larger or smaller MDC – which you may depending on exactly how much data center capacity you need, or based on special requirements like the ability to optimize energy efficiency – you can build one.

2. Plan for energy efficiency

Speaking of energy efficiency, one of the challenges of modular data centers is that they don't always consume energy as efficiently as conventional facilities – especially if each MDC has its own power and HVAC system, and therefore can't benefit from the economy of scale that a larger, centralized system offers. Lack of insulation and limited air space may also impede energy efficiency.

Related:Modular Data Centers: Practical Use Cases for Your Enterprise

These are challenges that can be managed, however – and it's important to do so if you want to operate MDCs in a sustainable way. Consider adding insulation as part of the build process, for instance, or designing modular data centers so that they tie into a central HVAC system.

3. Address physical security risks

Because MDCs are typically built in to be lightweight and portable, they tend to be more vulnerable to physical security threats than conventional data centers. For example, a determined attacker could potentially cut through the steel shell of a shipping container that hosts an MDC, but breaking down the concrete wall of a conventional data center would be much harder.

For this reason, it's a best practice to ensure that you deploy adequate physical security controls when operating modular data centers – either by hardening the MDC itself, or by ensuring that physical security protections (like fences and remote monitoring devices) are present in the environment surrounding the MDC.

4. Ensure that you can build more of the same modular data centers in the future

One of the key benefits that modular data centers offer is the ability to add data center capacity granularly. To make the expansion process as efficient as possible, it's important to be able to purchase more of the same type of MDC that you originally obtained. Otherwise, it becomes more challenging to expand your facility because you have to integrate different types of MDCs together.

Related:Modular Data Centers: When They Work, and When They Don't

For this reason, work with your modular data center builder to ensure that you'll be able to obtain more modular data centers of the same type in the future. Using a standardized MDC design can also help to future-proof your MDC expansion plans.

5. Spread workloads across modular data centers

The self-contained nature of modular data centers may make it tempting to devote each MDC to a particular purpose or business need. From a resilience perspective, however, it's better to spread workloads across MDCs with some redundancy in place so that if one modular builds fails, your workloads will remain operational.

6. Make a modular data center decommissioning plan

Most businesses spend a lot of time planning the deployment of modular data centerss, but less time figuring out how they'll decommission modular data centers when they no longer need them (or when they upgrade to new types of MDCs).

To ensure that you can take modular data centers out of service when necessary, plan ahead. Answer questions like how you'll disconnect your MDC from power and HVAC systems, whether you'll be able to resell the facility and, if not, how you'll dispose of it.

Conclusion

Modular data centers can be a great way to add flexibility and modularity to a data center strategy. But if you truly want to optimize your MDCs, you need to plan proactively and think creatively about questions like how small or large you want each modular data center to be, how you'll connect MDCs to centralized systems and how you'll decommission your modular data centers when the time comes.